Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
I was born in the mountain part of Peru, but I had to leave at a very young age, because it was a time when war and terrorism had just started. Although the ideas of war and conflict were always present in my work, the ideas of my own identity, regarding the cholo identity, brownness and indigenism were mostly discarded and not addressed because of Lima city's classism and racism, so present to date. So this unknown part of my identity, as an indigenous-looking person, has made me think about Indianism, cultural alienation, colonialism and modernity, making me wonder and encouraging my practice, in which I propose decolonializing ideas and aesthetics, constantly questioning myself whether that is possible or not.
My interest in preexisting images of that political imaginary comes from stories, in how we've been told stories and taught history through imagery. The little gaps between what we know about them and what we believe from them, give us opportunities to reflect on and speculate about the real meaning of images, which we could never fully grasp. So I think that by rereading and relearning we can reformulate how we understand the past. There is also great power and responsibility in how we can write right now, and change the perception of certain images and events for the collective memory and the future.
The installation I’m presenting at the 21st Biennnial works as a gathering of different time/space cultures and movements, ancient and recent, that were developed in actual Peruvian territory. These different cultures share their memories and ideologies of life and death in a metaphoric and symbolic way. Historically, ideologies were born, forced and developed in this land—ideas such as sacrifice, modernity, colonialism, Christianism, indigenism, Marxism, communism etc.—all of whom caused the spill of sweat and blood in this land. On this soil the fruits that feed the people are grown and nurtured. The spread-out ceramics in the installation works as remainders and hints of the past, incomplete and apart, just like in the forms of display and the colonial memory present in the glass enclosures in ethnographic museums.